Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - Tell Me Lies

Aggressively white. Twelve and a half minutes in and I can’t bare anymore.

Lulu lemons. Soul cycle. Coffee+Adderall. Calorie burning. Calorie counting. Cattiness amongst females, especially in regards to aesthetics and at work.

I know that depiction does not equal endorsement, but this already feels toxic. No thanks.

Content Warnings

cgm42's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25

Made the mistake of going "oh this show is based on a book? I should read it" the show is better but if you have time to kill (or can't sleep) and want to know how the show might end, the book might give you a general idea. Bless the writers room competency.

Stars removed for placing Baird in California (google says its in New York. Want a school setting in California? the state has many to choose from or make up fictional school) and for improper use of The Cranberries (this is a personal bias).

The story itself is about entering in messy/abusive relationships and confusing sex with actual feelings or a relationship, its told in 2 perspectives Stephen & Lucy. There are a couple of flashback scenes, one that I don't feel like it helped the story in any way and the other flashback takes place in college and is the bulk of the story. There are better books out there that address these themes better, go read those. That said I didn't hate the book enough to DNF so that's my fault really because I love trash. If you're here for the relatable likeable character, this is not your book.

Although its mostly in Lucy's perspective, I could have done with less of Stephen. We get it that he's terrible as the story unfolds and seeing the story be told by his perspective makes sense to give context to his actions and his obsession with Lucy but there are certain storylines from him that didn't need to be there as it borders on him being a cartoon villain, when I felt the book already established quite clearly that he is not a good person. Making him comically obvious that he's terrible removes the subtlety of how abusers act.

Lucy's story arc is...complicated. Although I didn't really like her personality & a lot of the decisions she made, that didn't make me less empathetic of her situation. Because yes being around an abusive and charming person, you will make dumb decisions, especially when you're in college.

I enjoyed her ending, was she suddenly an amazing person, with her shit together? no, but she's trying. Contrasting it to how she first hit her low point and went for help before her senior year and then fell back to her old habits. I like that because it showed that progress can be slow and that's ok.

I really didn't like the Macy's storyline as it didn't contributed anything to the story and could have easily been left out. Stephen shouldn't have been driving under the influence and he shouldn't have left the scene of the accident and he belongs in jail but it one of those things where its like yes we get it he's evil look at what a terrible thing he did stop beating us over the head with it. Also, when Lucy is remembering Macy and she's convinced that it was about him... I can't suspend my belief that hard. Sure Lucy is smart but for her to just know that it was him who caused the car accident makes ZERO sense & even confronting him like that made ZERO sense. It felt like fridge-ing but even more useless.

My other nit-picky thing was The Unspeakable Thing, once her character talks about catching her mom in an affair with her school girl crush (and wow what a creep that guy was) she keeps talking about it as The Unspeakable Thing, just call it CJ's affair from then on.

Content Warnings

lindsayerin's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

andreabrown's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

cosycourtney's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

After watching the trailer for the tv show coming out shortly I was really excited to read this book. However, I was greatly disappointed. Considering this book was under 300 pages, it felt like the longest short book I’d ever fucking read. The reasons I didn’t like this book were because 90% of it was female suffering with a sneeze of female empowerment. Did the author just want to wonder what it felt like to be a toxic male for the period of her life she wrote this? The focus on the male POV in this novel made me sick as I felt like Stephen was the most developed of the two characters and I felt like I knew more about him than Lucy by the end. Stephen is the worst type of person and there is no arguments there, well executed because I was mad and disgusted; bravo. However, LUCY was such a wildly disappointing character. The potential for growth, retribution, and happiness was so ripe and just ignore. Mind you, the lack of showing and just telling was infuriating. I only finished this book because I had high hopes it would be closed out with a bang and I could launch my fists in the air and say for good her but like what we got was pathetic. The entire 4 year relationship being rounded out by an epilogue felt lazy. For Lucy to end up in another pathetic relationship where a man only wants her for her body, still in a run down job & he gets the “happy ending” was just annoying. PLUS don’t even get me started in the Macy thing. Also, the amount of content surrounding Lucy’s eating disorder for her to just suddenly not have one anymore ???? And also the notion that she was “better” and yet she was still exercising ferociously and binging sweets. Overall, I was so disappointed with this book and hope the show is better.

Content Warnings

pshafer's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25

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